


when my time comes around

by QueenOfCarrotFlowers



Series: Carrot's Horror Stories [21]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Horror, Inspired by a Hozier Song, Murder, Near Drowning, Resurrection, Song: Work Song (Hozier), Title from a Hozier Song, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:28:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26454154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers
Summary: Ben Solo had been dead for three months, three weeks, and three days.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Carrot's Horror Stories [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175285
Comments: 57
Kudos: 61
Collections: Reylo After Dark, Reylo Readers & Writers - The Spooktacular Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 7 of the Reylo Readers & Writers Spooktacular Collection: ZOMBIES
> 
> Thank you to flypaper_brain for the beta and the support 💕
> 
> In case it's not clear from the tags and from the fic summary, Ben Solo is the zombie of the story. He starts out dead and then is not, and he will remain not-dead through the end of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end notes for detailed content warnings.

Ben had been dead for three months, three weeks, and three days, and Rey was certain that she had died with him. It had been so sudden; the diagnosis, first, followed by a series of failed treatments. Eventually they’d given up and he’d spent his last weeks in hospice care, sleeping and crying and sleeping some more. He’d been in so much pain at the end that his death would have been a blessing if it hadn’t left Rey feeling carved out and empty. But she had eventually figured out a way to make it through the day. She woke up, went to work, came home, ate dinner, went to bed. On the weekends she would sit alone in the living room while the sun moved from one side of the house to the other, and then she would go to bed and it would start over again. 

Rey knew that something was different when she woke up on that Sunday morning. She awoke before her alarm, for one thing. She had to take medicine to sleep, and waking up was always a struggle. But on that morning she opened her eyes to the clear light of dawn filtering in past the curtains, and to a clear head. She’d dreamed, too - dreamed about Ben, for the first time since he died. They’d been together, and he’d told her that he would be home soon, and promised that he would never leave her again. It had been a dark dream, not quite a nightmare but skirting the edges; Ben in the dream was strange and unhappy, but nevertheless the dream had left her hopeful. So instead of eating cold cereal in her nightgown she pulled on clothes and walked down to the shop on the corner, bought bacon and eggs and a styrofoam cup full of hot coffee with cream, and she returned home and made herself breakfast. 

After breakfast she went into the bedroom closet and took the old shoebox off the top shelf, and she sat with it on the living room sofa. Unlike every other Sunday, when she would zone out, mind blank, and eventually the room would be dark and it would be time for bed, on this day she was almost hyper aware of herself and her surroundings. She took note of every speck of dust, every object out of place in the room after months of neglect. But she thought about Ben.

They’d hated each other when they met - she was in her first year of college and he was in the last year of his PhD and they lived in the same apartment building. He was a raging asshole and she was a bitch and they would fight in the hallway and on the sidewalk and in the laundry room, and when she finally slipped up and kissed him instead of smacking him she cried because she’d never felt so known before. He’d make love to her on his mattress on the floor, and whisper the sweetest words. It wasn’t until they got married that she discovered he was estranged from his family; the only person on Ben’s side at the courthouse was a very debonair Black man who bore a wide smile, gave Ben a hearty handshake and kissed Rey’s cheek after the ceremony, and declined to join them and their friends at the bar after. Rey hadn’t even caught his name. Ben had explained some things later - inattentive parents, an abusive uncle, his father’s unfortunate death - but Rey hadn’t paid much attention because she didn’t care. Ben was her family; he was all that she needed. She had ended up meeting some people at the funeral, when Ben was buried in his family’s private graveyard on their estate just outside of the city, but she barely remembered the weeks after his death and she couldn’t bother to remember the people who had deserted him when he was alive.

She opened the box and touched the objects inside. There were ticket stubs and polaroid photographs, handwritten notes in Ben’s smooth calligraphy and Rey’s scratchy cursive, one of Ben’s business cards from his first start-up, his wedding ring. The wide gold band was cold at first touch, but it grew warmer the longer she held it in her fist. It was amongst memories of walks in the forest and laughing at movies and cooking together and making love - so much love - that she was interrupted by the knock on the door. When it finally came she wasn’t surprised; she couldn’t say how, but she’d been expecting it.

The man on the doorstep was older, with shoulder-length grey hair and a grey beard and deep frown lines around his mouth and weighing down the corners of his eyes. He was wearing a heavy button-up brown shirt and brown work pants, and his brown boots were covered with a thick layer of mud. 

The expression on the man’s face when she opened the door was one of surprise, as though he hadn’t really expected the door to open. But then his glance fell to the box tucked into the crook of her elbow and he relaxed.

“Rey. it’s good to see you again,” He said. His voice was cracked and quiet, as though he didn’t use it much. She held the shoebox closer to her breast and didn’t reply. Realizing she wasn’t going to say anything he continued. “We met at Ben's funeral. I’m Luke Skywalker. Ben’s uncle.” Rey took a step back in alarm, but Luke just looked sad. He gazed into her face, although she would not meet his eyes. “He told you about me, I see. I was wrong, Rey, I was so wrong. But I’ve found a way to make it up to him.” Luke swallowed. “You had a dream?”

Rey nodded, finally meeting his eyes. He stepped back, out of the doorway, making room for her. There was an old pickup truck parked down on the street - also brown, also covered with mud - and Luke gestured to it. 

“Let’s go, then. The sun will be going down soon. We don’t have a lot of time.”

* * *

The ride to wherever they were going was silent aside from the noise of the engine and the tires on asphalt. Luke didn’t bother to explain anything but that was okay with Rey; she didn’t need anything explained to her. She knew they were going to get Ben, to bring him home. She didn’t know how, but that wasn’t really important.

Ten minutes outside of the city limits, Luke took the turn off the state highway onto the private road that led up to the old Skywalker estate. Rey had been there exactly once, on the day that Ben’s body had been laid in the ground. Luke drove past the house - foreboding and windows dark - following the narrow gravel road up the hill to the wall just before the forest line, the waist-high stone wall that wrapped around a yard full of stones that looked as though they’d been dropped haphazardly from just a bit higher than they should have been. 

The road ended in a small parking area by the gate into the graveyard, and Luke parked the pickup there under a tree. They got out and he nodded towards the gate, which was open, and Rey stepped closer and looked in, in the direction where she remembered Ben’s grave lay, at the very end of what one might generously call a row, very close to the wall. But instead of a tidy grave there was a pile of dirt with two shovels tossed to the side. Rey started to walk towards it but Luke called out to her.

“Over here, Rey!” He was walking up near the treeline. “Into the woods! There’s not much time!” He was right; the sun would set on the other side of the hill, and the sky was already starting to turn pale. She followed him, the shoebox in her arms, and as she passed into the forest her heartbeat sped up with excitement. She’d be seeing Ben soon.

They stomped through the underbrush for several minutes. Rey heard the sound of the water before she saw it: a little spring that fell down out of a low, rocky cliff into a pool, before forming a stream and meandering off in the opposite direction. Luke paused by the pool, a small pile of dirt off on one side, and an old sheet pulled into a bundle on the other side. 

“Lando?” He called out, looking around. “Lando, are you here? Come on!”

He was answered by a crash in the bushes off to the left, and the Black man from her wedding stepped out, wiping his hands against his thighs. He was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, both of which looked new and uncomfortable on him. He greeted Rey with the same beautiful smile he’d gifted her when they met the first time.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Rey,” he said, eyes shining. “I’m so glad to be here.” He turned to Luke. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Come here.” Luke scooted over, towards the bundle, and there was just enough room for Rey and Lando to come and stand next to him. He had in his hands a ceramic jug that Rey hadn’t noticed before. Lando crouched down and picked up a handful of dirt, and Rey clutched her box of treasures.

“Ben’s grandparents, my parents, lived in the manor when Ben was small, and he used to visit them a lot, stay with them, and when he did he would come into the woods to play,” Luke began, his face dark with shadows. “He liked this spot in particular because here is where the water comes out of the ground, where it spends a bit of time getting used to life aboveground before making its way to greener pastures. He came up with that when he was five years old, if you can believe it.” Luke chuckled, and Rey smiled too. She’d never actually seen photos of Ben as a child, and the realization made her heart ache. Still, she could imagine him here, small with big ears, playing near the pool and thinking about the water. "He liked to swim here, and make up stories about the spirits that lived in the water and in the trees. He was such a creative, imaginative child. So full of love," Luke continued, "and because of something I did he almost lost it, lost that part of himself. But then he met you, Rey." Rey glanced up at Luke, but he was staring into the pool. "You taught him how to love again, and he was happy."

"We learned together," Rey said softly. The corner of Luke's mouth turned up in a sad smile.

"Ben deserved happiness. Deserves it. And that's why we're here tonight. To bring him back so he can have that happiness."

“Is he here?” She asked. 

“Almost,” Lando answered her. “Very soon.”

The three of them stood together and the forest grew more dark. Luke mumbled something under his breath, but Rey couldn’t tell what he was saying, if he was even saying anything at all. As the light departed the forest also became more quiet; there was no sound of birdsong, or animals moving in the underbrush, or even breeze moving through the leaves. The dripping of the spring into the pool slowed down, and then stopped. Luke ceased his mumbling. The forest was utterly silent.

Suddenly, without a word, Luke lifted up the jug and dumped its contents into the pool. Although the light was quite dim Rey could see very well, and she watched a thick ribbon of oil flow into the still water, dipping under the surface briefly before forming wide circles that shone like gold coins. Lando tossed in the handful of dirt, and Rey could swear that it hissed as it hit the liquid, effervescing briefly like baking soda in vinegar before sinking beneath the surface. Without pausing to think, Rey opened her box and turned it upside down, and all of her memories - Ben’s love letters and dreams and his wedding ring - fell into the pool. The papers, rather than floating, were sucked down through the surface of the pool, and Rey could swear that they glowed as they went. She tore off her own wedding ring, too, and tossed it in with everything else.

Luke was mumbling again. He stepped back, and Rey and Lando followed his lead. Together the three of them lifted the bundle off the ground; it stank of earth and death. Rey was surprised at how light it was, but then Ben had lost a lot of weight at the very end. They tossed the bundle into the water, where it splashed heavily, rolled over once, and then sank.

By the time the bundle disappeared beneath the surface of the water the forest was completely dark, and Luke’s quiet voice was the only sound Rey could hear. She was practically buzzing with excitement. _Where was he_? There wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the pool.

Finally Luke stopped mumbling and sighed, and Rey could feel hot tears already forming behind her eyes. So much for hope.

“I am sorry, Rey,” he said, placing his hand gently on her back. “It looks like you’re going to have to go in and get him.” And he pushed.

* * *

The water was warm, warm like a bathtub, and it was surprisingly clear and bright even though the sun had just set and with the oil and the dirt and the papers that floated around inside like dust motes floating through a sunbeam. It wasn’t until later that the warmth of the water struck Rey as strange; it was late September, almost October, the days were pleasant and the nights were chilly. A pool of water in the woods under such conditions should have been cold enough to shock. But Rey wasn’t thinking about that; she was thinking about Ben.

The pool wasn’t deep, maybe three or four feet, so it wasn’t hard for her to find the bundle of sheets there at the bottom. Unwrapping it was more difficult. It was tangled, and oddly felt heavier under the water than it had above ground, and it took Rey several seconds to find the edge of the sheet She didn’t think about breathing until her sight started to fade and she realized suddenly that she was very close to passing out. But she wasn’t going to leave Ben; she was going to bring him home.

She dug under the side of the bundle and finally found the edge of the sheet and she _pulled_. She had just enough time to see something large and dark roll out of it before she lost consciousness.

When Rey came to, she was being dragged out of the water, a strong arm slung across her chest, something warm and solid across her back. More hands grabbed her and pulled her up, and then she was on her back on the cold ground. She curled over onto her side, coughed and wheezed, her body desperate for oxygen, and a warm hand patted her on her back, a soft voice gentle in her ear. She knew that voice. Eventually she could breathe, and she rolled onto her back again and opened her eyes.

Ben gazed down at her. She knew it was him, she’d recognized the bulk of his body when he carried her out of the water, and the gentle touch of his hand across her back. She recognized his face now, the curve of his mouth and the color of his eyes, the way his ears poked through the hair that stuck wet against his skull. He looked strange, though, different somehow. She supposed that dying and coming back to life would do something to a person; but she was happy to see him anyway.

“Ben,” she said.

He smiled, producing the dimples in his cheeks that she’d always adored, his mouth opening to uncover his slightly crooked canines. 

It was then that Rey became aware of the other people standing nearby, and also aware that she could hear the spring splashing into the pool, and breeze blowing through the trees. The forest was alive again; whatever they had done, it was over, but Ben was here.

“Ben,” Luke’s voice said from off to Rey’s right. “I —” but he didn’t get a chance to say whatever it was he was going to say. As soon as Luke said his name, Ben’s demeanor transformed entirely; Rey barely caught a glance at his face contorting in rage before he was up, howling like a beast, leaping over her and tackling his uncle to the ground in a matter of seconds. Lando grabbed Ben’s shoulders and shouted at him, tried to pull him off, but Ben was immovable. Rey was still weak from her experience in the water, but she managed to drag herself to her feet and stumble to where Luke lay flat on his back on the ground, Ben looming over him with his hands around his uncle’s neck. She tried to help Lando pull Ben off but Ben was strong - much stronger than he’d been before - and he held Luke’s neck in his fists so tightly that his knuckles were white. Luke, on the other hand, was red, turning more red by the moment; he kicked his heels against the ground and held Ben’s wrists, tried hard to get his nephew to let go, but Ben would not. Rey caught a glimpse of her husband’s expression and it was nothing she’d ever seen before. Animalistic, inhuman, his face twisted into something that was barely recognizable as him. 

While this was happening Ben was silent. Rey’s hands grabbed at the rags that covered his body - remnants of the suit he’d been buried in - and she noticed that his body didn’t move; he wasn’t breathing. As he held Luke down, and Rey and Lando pulled at him and screamed and tried to pull him off, he neither moved nor made a sound. But he was warm, so very warm under Rey’s hands as she tugged at his arms and struck him across the back, and Luke gradually became still.

When Ben finally let go and sat back on his haunches, his first move was to embrace Rey again. She was so shocked that she let him, let him pull her into his arms and then into his lap. Her ear was pressed against his chest and she could not hear his heartbeat. He buried his face in her hair and it was only then that he breathed, inhaled deeply as though he was drawing her into his body.

“I have missed you so much,” he murmured, as though he hadn’t just murdered his uncle with his bare hands. “For so long. So very long.”

Rey’s mind raced. “How long have you missed me?” 

He grabbed her face in his warm hands and moved it so he could stare into her eyes. With the sun now fully set his eyes were dark and strange, like there was something behind them that she couldn’t fathom.

“I’ve missed you forever,” he said earnestly. “Forever.”

“Not forever,” she insisted. “You haven’t even been dead for four months.” 

“No. I’ve been dead forever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Ben is dead, Rey is in mourning. The story includes a non-detailed description of the circumstances around Ben's death by illness. Ben is brought back through a ritual which involves Rey passing out underwater. Ben strangles Luke, killing him.**
> 
> Please leave a kudos or comment if you like this chapter, they are so very encouraging!


	2. Chapter 2

_I’ve been dead forever._

Ben slung Luke’s body over his shoulder as though the old man were a sack of flour, and led Rey and Lando out of the woods, down the hill and into the graveyard, where he unceremoniously dropped Luke into the empty grave and picked up one of the shovels. 

_I’ve been dead forever._

He and Lando shoveled the dirt into the hole while Rey perched on the wall, a towel draped over her shoulders and a clean set of clothes that Luke and Lando had thoughtfully brought along for Ben clutched in her arms, and watched as her husband threw dirt in the moonlight.

_I’ve been dead forever._

This was her greatest dream, her husband back from the dead. He’d promised during their wedding vows that he would never leave her, and then he had, but now he was back and he was hers again. She watched Ben and tried to feel happy, she wanted to, but she couldn’t stop thinking about his unnatural warmth, his single breath and his nonexistent heartbeat, and most of all what he’d said when she told him he’d only been dead four months:

_**I’ve been dead forever.** _

It was a nightmare, not a dream. Ben had been dead forever. He had murdered his uncle with his bare hands as though it was nothing, and now he was burying the man in his own grave. Her husband was back from the dead but there was something wrong with him. Rey didn’t know what to think of any of it, or what to make of his insistence that he’d been dead forever. A chill of dread snaked down her spine and made her shiver and clutch the bundle of clothes more tightly to her chest. What did he mean by _forever_? 

* * *

Once the grave was refilled Ben went back up into the woods, stripped off his burial suit, and bathed in the pool. Rey dipped her hand in, thinking she might join him, but the water had turned deathly cold. Ben didn’t seem to mind the frigid temperature at all, didn’t even seem to notice it. When he launched himself out having declared himself clean his skin was as hot as it had been when he came out the first time. She dried him with the towel and helped him dress, and noticed an eerie lack of goosebumps anywhere on him. 

They drove back into town in Luke’s pickup truck, the three of them crowded together on the bench seat in silence. Rey, being the smallest, sat in the middle, and Ben placed his arm around her protectively. She leaned against him and squeezed his thigh, and she did not hear him breathe at all in the twenty minutes it took to drive from the old Skywalker estate back to their house near downtown. 

By the time Lando dropped them off it was almost midnight and Rey was starving; she hadn’t eaten since her breakfast of bacon and eggs that morning, which felt like a lifetime ago. She was tired, too, and lightheaded after the events of the evening. She followed Ben out of the truck and waited on the sidewalk while he walked around to the driver’s side and had a brief chat with Lando. She half listened to their conversation, focused too much on the sound of Ben’s voice to make sense of what exactly they were saying. It seemed cordial enough, and it ended with Lando saying that he would stop by to check on them the next evening. She did notice that neither of them mentioned Luke, nor anything else that had happened that evening, and her gut twisted. _Ben was back from the dead_. People would notice. Isn’t this something they should talk about?

Without bothering to turn on the lights Rey led Ben into the living room and they sat down next to each other on the sofa, where she had been sitting when Luke had knocked on the door hours before.

“Are you really Ben?” She asked quietly into the darkness, and he turned his head to stare down at her.

“Of course I’m Ben,” he answered, lifting his hand to her face. “Who else would I be?”

She looked into his eyes and she knew he was telling the truth. The moonlight filtering through the window bathed him in an ethereal glow. She spread her hand over his chest and held it there, feeling his warmth and his nonexistent heartbeat. 

“What did you mean when you said you’d been dead forever?”

Ben frowned and raised the hand not cradling her chin to place it over hers on his chest. He shifted them slightly to his left, so they were directly over where his heart would be, if he had one.

“Felt like forever,” he finally said. “Just me, alone, thinking. About you.” He leaned down and kissed her so tenderly she wanted to cry. But there was no warm breath against her cheek, and she missed it. He pulled back after a moment and blinked. “I thought about everything, what I could have done differently, what I could have done better.” He paused, shaking his head slowly. “I was alone and it felt like forever.” 

“You’re not alone now,” Rey said, interlacing their fingers, ignoring the discomfort in the pit of her stomach and wanting to believe her words were true. Ben smiled.

“Neither are you.”

* * *

“I don’t have much to eat,” Rey said, opening the fridge with trembling hands and pulling out the carton of eggs and the plate full of bacon she hadn’t finished in the morning. “But you always liked breakfast for dinner, is this okay?”

Ben sat on a stool at the kitchen island and frowned down at the food, then looked up at Rey. 

“I’m not hungry,” he finally said, after taking a breath. “I’m not even sure I can eat.”

The discomfort she’d been feeling in her stomach rematerialized as a cold knot in her chest. She nodded, avoiding Ben’s gaze, and whipped up eggs for herself, plus one more just in case, and poured them in the fat of the bacon in a pan hot on the stove. While the eggs cooked she placed the bacon alongside them in the pan to heat them up, make them more crispy - Ben had always liked his bacon extra crispy. When it was all done she piled most of it onto a large plate for herself, but set aside a spoonful of egg and half a slice of bacon on a smaller plate for Ben. She passed it to him across the island, along with a fork.

“Here,” she said, finally meeting his eyes. They were endless, and they filled her with heat and chill at the same time. She tried to smile at him, and he tried to smile back. “Please.”

He did his best. As Rey shoved her food in her mouth, barely even tasting it but enjoying the sensation of becoming full, Ben placed a forkful of egg in his mouth and shifted it around before spitting it back onto the plate. He did this three times before he ran out of fresh eggs, and he set down his fork and took a breath.

"No," he said. “They taste wrong, and they feel weird in my mouth. I don’t think I can swallow them.”

“Okay,” she said, blinking back tears as she scraped the uneaten eggs and bacon into the trash, the cold knot in her chest drawing a little bit tighter. She walked around the island, tugged Ben’s arm until he stood up and faced her, and she leaned against him, wrapped her arms around him. He held her close, too, winding one hand around her waist as the other tangled in her hair. She pressed her face to his chest and held her breath. His body was warm but it was so quiet inside. She’d used to love listening to his heartbeat, to the sound of him breathing in his sleep. His sleep. Would he sleep? The cold knot in her chest spread up into her throat and she held him more tightly, willing his warmth to counteract it. Ben’s body might be dead but _he_ was alive, Rey assured herself. He was warm. He loved her. He was _here_. He’d come back.

Rey took Ben by the hand and pulled him towards the hallway. “I’m tired. You must be…” she was going to say _exhausted_ but she let the sentence drop. Since she’d already figured he wasn’t going to sleep it seemed like a silly thing to express out loud.

“I’m not exhausted, if that’s what you were going to say,” Ben said anyway, with a touch of humor in his voice which was just familiar enough to make her smile, and to bring tears to her eyes. “But I don’t think I can sleep.”

“What can you do?” Rey said, feeling brave and slightly hysterical as they turned the corner into their bedroom. 

Ben didn’t reply, but they were barely through the door before he lifted Rey off her feet and tossed her onto the bed, his warm, solid body following her a moment later. He caged her in and kissed her. This was his answer, apparently. His lips were as soft and as sweet as ever, and when she opened her mouth to him and welcomed his tongue, she was surprised to find that he tasted like himself. She wondered what she tasted like to him. His hair was soft and familiar in her fists, but he was so quiet, too quiet; the only sounds were the sloppy, wet noises of their mouths and her own gasps and moans. While they kissed his hands roamed; down her sides, over her legs, up her chest, as though he wanted to touch every part of her at once. Her core answered his attentions, and she couldn’t help spreading her legs wide and thrusting her hips up against him, moaning loudly despite his continued silence. She did her best to focus on what was familiar and ignore that which made it clear that Ben was different now that he’d been before. _This is okay_ , Rey persuaded herself as she rocked her hips against his thigh again. _I’ll get used to it. At least he’s here at all_.

She was surprised to find that his cock was hard in his sweatpants, and she couldn’t help but wonder how that might work, considering that he didn’t have a heartbeat. _Did he even have blood? What would happen if she cut him?_ He roughly tugged her leggings down and rubbed his fingertips into her labia, and she stopped caring. It was magic, it was all magic, and even if he didn’t have a heartbeat or a need to breathe, even if he couldn’t eat or sleep or _feel_ it didn’t matter, none of that mattered because he was _here_ , he was here and that was what Rey needed, more than anything. She just needed him here. Right?

When he pressed his cock into her she was so wet that he met no resistance whatsoever, just slid right in as though he belonged there. He fucked her more roughly than he ever did before, in complete silence. It was good, it was _amazing_ , his thickness stretched her perfectly and as he moved inside her he reached every part of her that had never stopped craving his touch. His movements were feral but still calculated, as though he’d been thinking about doing it for a very long time, had worked out his perfect plan of action, and finally had an opportunity to see it through. 

It reminded her, oddly enough, of his murder of Luke ealier in the evening. There seemed to be no thought behind it, just muscle memory, an absolute certainty that the thing he was doing was right. He fucked her, and she let him, and he made her come three times on his cock before he finally came himself, with a deep breath followed by a growl so raw and so brutal it was almost inhuman.

He pulled out dry, with no sign of cum. Rey’s heart sank, and she was overwhelmed with a sadness that hit like a punch to the gut. She could overlook his silence, his lack of breathing, his heartbeat gone… was _this_ the thing that was going to break her? She refused. She licked her own cum off of him while she wept, and he got hard again very quickly. She kept going, and at some point he held her head steady and fucked her mouth like he’d missed it, desperately, and maybe he had. When he came his cock pulsed and he cried her name, but it left her mouth dry and wanting.

Rey excused herself to the bathroom to pee and shower, and when she came back Ben was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, exactly where she’d left him. He looked over and smiled at her, lifted the covers up to welcome her back. She crawled in next to him and wrapped herself around him, trying desperately to absorb as much of his warmth as she could. 

“What are you going to do while I sleep?” Rey asked after several minutes of that unnerving silence, Ben’s fingers tracing up and down her spine. He took a breath.

“I’ll be right here,” he said. 

“Tomorrow’s Monday. I have to go to work.”

“That’s fine. I’ll stay here while you’re at work. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” she said, thinking about him lying in bed alone while she’s at work, or standing in a dark corner all day, just waiting for her to come home.

Ben’s fingers played in her hair. “I made a vow, when we got married, to never leave you, and then I did,” he whispered, his breath as warm as his skin against her cheek. “I waited so long to get back to you.”

“Forever,” Rey said, echoing what he said earlier, her voice shaking in her chest.

“Forever,” Ben repeated. “And I’m never leaving you again.”

“Never?” Rey choked on a sob, and rolled onto her side. Ben rolled over, too, curled around her back like the fiddlehead of a fern. His body was so hot, and so very dead.

“Never,” he whispered into her ear. “I will _never_ leave you, Rey.”

Rey wept, and he held her, and when she woke up in the morning he was still holding her, and he was still awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at this gorgeous moodboard that @Bk2Jakku on Twitter made for me! Look at it! I love it!  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> The basic premise and plot of this fic are based on the biblical story of Lazarus (John 11:1-44), and are also influenced by [Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Mrs. Lazarus"](https://genius.com/Carol-ann-duffy-mrs-lazarus-annotated) from her collection _The World's Wife_. Rey in our story is nothing like Mrs. Lazarus, really, but I still think about her as I write.
> 
> Elements of Ben and Rey's relationship and the characterization of Ben are based on Hozier's _[Work Song](https://youtu.be/H3g0d6Cgqyg)_ , and the title is a lyric from that song.
> 
> If you are jonesing for more zombie!Ben Solo, go read [TAKE THE SOUL, LEAVE THE BODY](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26440570) by neonheartbeat, which is what I am reading now that I am done writing this.
> 
> I also wrote a fix-it fic in which Rey brings Ben back from the dead on Exegol, [Warmth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21871837), please mind the tags (it ends happily!)


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